https://exchange.prx.org/p/629199
What??? Free-form rock from the early '70s again?? Yep. Enjoy!
Artist: Bachman-Turner Overdrive
Title: Roll On Down The Highway
Source: Ecuadorian import LP: Best Of BTO (So Far) (originally released on LP: Not Fragile)
Writer(s): Bachman/Turner
Label: Mercury
Year: 1974
Not Fragile was the most successful album from the Canadian band Bachman-Turner Overdrive, being their only LP to hit the #1 spot of the Billboard album chart. It was also the debut of second lead guitarist Blair Thornton, who replaced Tim Bachman in the band originally founded by his brother Randy, former lead guitarist of the Guess Who. A third Bachman brother, Rob, co-wrote (with bassist Fred Turner) the second top 20 single from the album, Roll On Down The Highway. The album title itself, according to Randy Bachman, was actually a parody of Yes's Fragile album title, which Bachman thought was "strange." He said he figured that BTO's music, on the other hand, could be dropped and kicked without breaking; thus the title Not Fragile.
Artist: Faces
Title: Ooh-La-La
Source: 45 RPM single (promo copy)
Writer(s): Wood/Lane
Label: Warner Brothers
Year: 1973
Rod Stewart does not perform on the song Ooh-La-La (that's Ronnie Wood on lead vocals). In fact, he is entirely missing from three of the ten tracks on the 1973 album Ooh La La. This is because by 1973 Rod Stewart was a Big Solo Rock Star who apparently had little interest in honoring his commitments to his bandmates. He missed the first two weeks of sessions for the album entirely and appeared to be distracted when he did bother to show up. After the album was released he went out of his way to tell anyone that would listen how bad the album was. Now do you understand why I have zero respect for Rod Stewart?
Artist: Sweathog
Title: Hallelujah
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Zelkey/Bottler/Twain
Label: Columbia
Year: 1971
In 1972 I was barely still a teenager, hanging out at the Teen Club on Holloman AFB (formerly the Airmen's club), playing pool for free (but sometimes you had to wait for one of the two tables to open up), pinball (not free) and, on nearly every weekend, dancing to the music of a live band (when I wasn't a member of the band itself). All of the bands that played the Teen Club were cover bands, of course, and several of them were from El Paso, playing three or four 45 minute sets for what was hopefully enough money to pay for the gas money it took to make the 180 mile round trip. I don't remember too many band names from back then, but I do remember one of them doing a truly kickass version of Sweathog's Hallelujah. As for Sweathog itself, the band was formed sometime in the late 1960s by members of various San Jose, California area bands. By 1970 they had relocated to the Los Angeles area and become the house band at a club in the San Fernando valley. This in turn led to the band signing with Columbia in 1971. Late in the year they released Hallelujah as a single, following it up with an album of the same name in early 1972. Given all this, can someone explain to me why a band formed in California by Californians seems to always get described as a Southern Rock band?
Artist: David Bowie
Title: Drive-In Saturday
Source: CD: Nothing Has Changed (originally released on LP: Aladdin Sane)
Writer(s): David Bowie
Label: Columbia/Legacy (original label: RCA Victor)
Year: 1973
The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars transformed David Bowie from a cult figure to an international star. This led to a US tour, which influenced the songwriting for his next LP, Aladdin Sane. Bowie had only released one single, Starman, from the Ziggy Stardust album, preferring to instead put out a series of brand new songs while working on his new album, Aladdin Sane. The third of these new singles was Drive-In Saturday, a science-fiction piece about how people in a dystopian future need to watch old films from the 20th century to remember how to have sex. The song was released a week ahead of the album that it ended up appearing on and went into the top 5 in Ireland and the UK, but did not chart elsewhere (in fact it wasn't even released as a single in the US).
Artist: National Lampoon
Title: Classic Riddles (pt. 1 & 2)/Public Disservice Message: Care Packages To Europe
Source: CD: The Best Of The National Lampoon Radio Hour, volume 3
Writer(s): group effort
Label: Rhino
Year: Recorded 1973-74, released 1996
The National Lampoon Radio Hour only ran for a little over a year, and was actually only a half hour long for most of its run. The show, created and produced by Michael O'Donoghue, featured material written by the same people who did the National Lampoon magazine, and featured an array of voice talent, including many of the performers who would later become the original Not Ready For Prime Time Players for NBC's Saturday Night Live. In 1996 Rhino Records put out a three CD box set called The Best Of The National Lampoon Radio Hour that included extensive liner notes. Unfortunately, all I have is the third CD in the set and no liner notes, thus I have no idea who the actual writers or performers were who gave us Classic Riddles, interrupted by a Public Disservice Message: Care Packages To Europe. It sure sounds like the work of O'Donoghue, who went on to become head writer for Saturday Night Live for its first three seasons, making occasional on-camera appearances as bedtime storyteller Mr. Mike.
Artist: Jethro Tull
Title: My God
Source: CD: Aqualung
Writer: Ian Anderson
Label: Chrysalis
Year: 1971
The fortunes of Jethro Tull improved drastically with the release of the Aqualung album in 1971. The group had done well in their native UK but were still considered a second-tier band in the US. Aqualung, however, propelled the group to star status, with several tracks getting heavy airplay on FM rock radio. Although Ian Anderson has always maintained that Aqualung was a concept album, that doesn't account for the fact that the two sides of the album were subtitled Aqualung and My God. Maybe that means Aqualung was actually two HALF concept albums, I don't know. Speaking of My God, in addition to being the obvious theme of the entire second side of the LP, it was also the title of the first (and longest) track on that side, and lyrically lays down all the basic ideas presented on the second half of the Aqualung album.
Artist: Derek And The Dominos
Title: Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out
Source: CD: Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs
Writer(s): Jimmie Cox
Label: Polydor (original label: Atco)
Year: 1970
After seeing the Allman Brothers Band in concert, Eric Clapton invited Duane Allman to an after-hours jam session at which the two guitarists hit it off immediately. Clapton then asked Allman to join him in the studio, where his new band Derek And The Dominos had just begun recording what would become the double-length album Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. The first song for the album that Allman played on was Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out, a tune written in 1923 by Jimmie Cox and popularized by Bessie Smith during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The song was recorded in a single take with no overdubs, and contains outstanding guitar solos from both Allman and Clapton.
Artist: Led Zeppelin
Title: The Lemon Song
Source: CD: Led Zeppelin II
Writer(s): Page/Plant/Bonham/Jones/Burnett
Label: Atlantic
Year: 1969
If I had to choose just one Led Zeppelin song as representative of the band's early work it would have to be The Lemon Song, from their second album. The track has all the elements that made the Zep's reputation: Jimmy Page's distinctive guitar work, John Bonham's stuttered (but always timely) drum fills, John Paul Jones's funky bass line and Robert Plant's gutsy vocals (with lyrics famously derived from classic blues tunes). Squeeze my lemon, baby indeed!
Artist: Beatles
Title: Abbey Road Medley #1
Source: CD: Abbey Road
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Apple/Parlophone
Year: 1969
Much of the second side of the last album to be recorded by the Beatles, Abbey Road, is taken up by (depending on whose view you take) either one long medley or two not-quite-so-long medleys of songs written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Personally I take the former view, as there is just a bit too much quiet space at the end of She Came In Through The Bathroom Window for me to consider it linked to the next song, Golden Slumbers. Regardless, the whole thing starts with You Never Give Me Your Money, a Paul McCartney composition reputed to be a jab at the band's second (and last) manager, Allen Klein. This leads into three John Lennon pieces, Sun King, Mean Mr. Mustard and Polythene Pam, ending finally with another McCartney piece, She Came In Through The Bathroom Window, that was inspired by a real life break-in by an overzealous Beatle fan.
Artist: Allman Brothers Band
Title: Black Hearted Woman
Source: CD: Beginnings (originally released on LP: The Allman Brothers Band)
Writer(s): Gregg Allman
Label: Polydor/Polygram (original label: Atco)
Year: 1969
It's almost a cliche that a rock and roll songwriter will get at least one good song out of a relationship that ends badly. If this is indeed the case, Gregg Allman's relationship with a woman in Los Angeles named Stacy must have been particularly rocky, as it served as the inspiration for no less than three songs on the Allman Brothers Band's debut LP. Perhaps the most "to the point" of these was Black Hearted Woman, which pulls no punches whatsoever.
Artist: Savoy Brown
Title: I Can't Get Next To You
Source: LP: Street Corner Talking
Writer(s): Whitfield/Strong
Label: Parrot
Year: 1971
Following the release of the album Looking In, Savoy Brown founder Kim Simmonds decided to take the band in an entirely new direction. His enthusiasm for the change was not shared by his bandmates, however, and Simmonds ended up firing the lot of them and hiring a whole new crew for the 7th Savoy Brown LP, Street Corner Talking. This new lineup consisted of members of the band Chicken Shack, which had fallen apart when their front person, Christine Perfect (later to be Christine McVie) left to join Fleetwood Mac. One indication of the band's new direction was a bluesy arrangement of Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong's I Can't Get Next To You, which had been a hit single for the Temptations a few years earlier. The Savoy Brown arrangement of the song, with its infectious beat and bass line, was inspired by Al Green's version of the song.
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